Anyone like origin stories of simple, elegant design?

One thing I miss about working for Steve Jobs is how you could run into his office with a well-designed product and he would brighten up. Then he'd run his hands over it, stare at it from every different angle, and critique the design.

Once I had a big Sony TV camera and he had to hold it, ask what all the buttons did, comment on the shade of black they used and the feel of it on his shoulder. Ever since then, when I come across an article like this for the origin of the simple, elegant, Oxo carrot peeler, which is less than $10, I think of Steve.

What grabs me is the timelessness of good design. I look at things like moustraps, peelers, can openers, bottle openers, the doorknob and they seem so cheap, so utilitarian.

But they are triumphs of design. What to my eye might look crude is actually the best expression of a pure tool, designed to do the job with the perfect balance betwen efficiency and cost.

I'm fascinated by them. We take perfect design for granted precisely because the tool does the job so well we don't give it a second thought. I know we're surrounded by such items and, most of the time, are unaware of it.

I work for a software company that is paying serious attention to UX. We're absolutely crushing our competition because of our committment to delivering enterprise power with a consumer grade UX.

We get asked why we don't have administrator and user certifications fairly regularly, to which I respond that those products have to offer a cert because their interfaces never really help you accomplish a goal. Instead they help you accomplish tasks, one little bit at a time, with no anticipatory linkage to the next step to get to your goal.

Instead, we use the goal they desire as the function and then lead them through it one simple step at a time, completely free of jargon. We often think of tangible objects as design, but more than we know, user interfaces have equally profound impact.

I love simple and functional design. I even bought a specific type of house that was designed and built in the 1950s based on these principles.

Dieter Rams came up with 10 design principles that I always think about. He's a legendary industrial designer that designed many products for Braun. Many people think of Braun as an electric shaver company, but they have a deep history of building beautifully simple household products and electronics.

I inherited a Braun record player that my grandfather bought in New York after coming home from the war in France. It is of the same era as my house and is one of my prized possessions. It needs some new vacuum tubes and someday I want to fully restore it.

I'm also completely infatuated with the Braun SK55 designed by Dieter Rams. It's just so simple and beautiful.